The UK’s deputy ambassador to Israel expressed “disappointment” Monday over reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled a planned meeting with his British counterpart Theresa May in protest of London’s support for a UN Security Council resolution that condemned West Bank settlement building.

Netanyahu’s office had denied reports Sunday night that he had nixed a meeting with May next month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying that no meeting had been set. But the deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, Tony Kay, told The Times of Israel there had been plans for a sit-down, though Jerusalem had not told London it planned to cancel the meeting.

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“The UK remains and always will be a dear and close friend of Israel” and rejects boycott or “any efforts to delegitimize or undermine” it, he said. Echoing the remarks of the UK’s ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, made Friday at the Security Council, Kay reiterated his government’s “stalwart commitment to Israel’s security and its existence as the Jewish homeland.”

At the same time, Britain considers Israeli settlements outside the 1967 lines — including in Jerusalem’s Old City — illegal and an obstacle to peace. Furthermore, he added, Resolution 2334 did not only condemn the settlements, but also called for a stop of violence and incitement.

“We worked hard for a balanced text and we felt that the text was sufficiently balanced to warrant the UK voting in favor,” Kay said.